


For Once Forget Fate

by earlymorningechoes



Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:30:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlymorningechoes/pseuds/earlymorningechoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jonas comes to Earth to ask for help against the Priors of the Ori and is introduced to Vala, they are both surprised by how easily they hit it off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Once Forget Fate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magequisition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magequisition/gifts).



     “Unscheduled offworld activation!” came the familiar shout from the control room. Sam sped to the computer, sliding into her chair next to Walter with her fingers already clicking over the keyboard. “Receiving IDC!” he added, clicking away as well. He suddenly stopped and sent a sidelong glance toward Sam.

     “Colonel Carter, it’s…it’s Jonas Quinn,” he told her. She looked up from the computer and out into the gate room as she gave the order to open the iris. Seconds later, a rather familiar form stepped through the gate and stopped, as if waiting. Hurrying down the stairs and through the blast doors, she ran up the ramp and hugged the man before her professional sensors kicked into gear. Once they did, she stepped back slightly, but the grin on her face never wavered.

     “What brings you here, Jonas?” she asked enthusiastically, knowing that he wouldn’t be here unless something truly bad had happened, but just wanting to bask in the moment of seeing her friend again.

     “Hey, Sam,” he said first, giving her a quick shoulder squeeze before they headed out of the gate room. “I wish I had more chance to come back when things weren’t in dire straits on Langara…but most recently the problem is that a man claiming to be a Prior of the Ori has found his way to Kelowna. The Andaris and the Tiranians are still saying that they’ll be fine, they’ll work with him once Kelowna has fallen because the First Minister is speaking out against a false religion after all the experiences with the Goa’uld…but I thought you might be able to help.”

     Sam sighed. “Well, we haven’t had much luck against them either. Daniel would be of more help than me, though…but he’s not here at the moment. I’ll introduce you to Vala though – she’s had more experience with them. She’s got to be here somewhere…” The two headed for the elevator, catching up quickly on the past few years and lamenting what little they were able to see one another.

     Vala was quickly found in the commissary, introductions were made, and the conversation about ways to deal with the Priors and the Ori was begun. Sam participated a bit at first, but her experiences with the Priors had so far been mostly secondhand, so she wasn’t saying much and felt an odd push to leave the other two alone. Politely excusing herself, she wondered where that thought had come from as she headed back to her lab.

 -------------

     Later that evening, after sharing a phone call with Jack in Washington that left her missing him more than ever, Sam headed back for the commissary, expecting it to be empty or nearly so at this hour. But she discovered Jonas and Vala, still sitting at the same table in the corner, engrossed in conversation so deep they didn’t hear the blonde woman approach.

     “Hey,” she said, startled a bit when they both jumped. A bit confused, she asked, “Why are you both still here so late?”

     Vala glanced down at her watch, a Tau’ri invention she had taken to wholeheartedly, eyes widening. “I didn’t know it was so late,” she said quickly, eyes sliding sideways towards Jonas, who nodded.

     “It’s too late for me to go back to Kelowna tonight,” he told Sam, “there are restrictions on gate use, a less-sophisticated way to try and recognize outsiders without an iris. If I go back now I’ll be at least imprisoned. I can go back tomorrow…I’m sorry to impose.”

     Sam shook her head fiercely. “You’re never an imposition, Jonas. You can stay on base if you’d like, your quarters are still empty.” He smiled gratefully, and he and Vala both headed for the residential section of the base, Sam watching them go as they picked their conversation right up without a backward glance.

     _So that’s why I felt the need to leave,_ she smiled to herself, a bit weirded out by the two of them but happy nonetheless.

 -------------

     After taking a moment to just stop and turn slowly in the middle of his old quarters on base – the small rooms that had been home for over a year – Jonas was surprised by a knock at his door. Pulling the door back open, he found Vala standing in the hallway, a bathrobe wrapped around her thin frame and a Sudoku book clutched in one hand.

     “Hey…” she said, uncharacteristically tentative, “you said something about having a Sudoku book with you back on your planet that you’d somehow ended up with when you left. I do the one in the paper every morning…Samantha still does the crossword puzzles and showed me Sudoku. I like having a puzzle to do that doesn’t signal the end of a planet somewhere in the galaxy.” She held the book in her hand out to him. “You’re been gone for so long, I thought you’d probably finished all the puzzles you had with you. So I brought you some new ones…I’ve only done the very first few in this book, so if you’d like to have it…”

     Jonas gave her a smile, taking the book from her hand. “Thank you. I think Dr. Jackson may have slipped the original one into my bag when I left, but I did finish it quite a while ago.” He passed the book from hand to hand, unsure of what to say next.

     It turned out he didn’t have too. Having gotten through the giving of the book, Vala was back to her confident self, plopping soundly on his bed and staring up at him with her wide, chocolatey eyes. He gave her a grin, tapping the book one last time against the back of his hand before setting it on the nightstand – his nightstand – and sitting on the bed as well. Slowly kicking her feet back and forth through the air as she laid on her stomach, Vala’s eyes traversed the stark room.

     “Did you take everything with you when you went back to…Kelowna?” she asked, her voice faltering only slightly over the unfamiliar word, less from its foreign taste in her mouth than from the sudden absence she felt at the thought of Jonas having to go back to that very unfamiliar place in the morning. He shook his head lightly and reached back over to the nightstand, pulling open its drawer and pulling out a small black book.

     “My journal,” he said simply, flipping gently through the pages as the book rested on his crooked knee. “This is the only thing I brought with me from Kelowna, and it’s the only thing I left behind.” As he ran his fingers along the smooth edges of the pages, both of them were silent for a moment, each remembering their myriad experiences both on Earth and in planetary systems thousands upon thousands of light-years away.

     Without really meaning to, Vala found herself sliding her hand into Jonas’s, their fingers interlocking with seemingly no direction from their respective owners. Jonas looked down at their hands, then cast a shy smile in Vala’s direction. She tucked her knees and elbows underneath her, twisting her body back into a sitting position without breaking their held hands.

     Another unfamiliar feeling – she didn’t want to just kiss him, undress him. All she wanted was to hold his hand, put her head on his shoulder. So she did just that, curling her knees so her feet were tucked behind her and resting her head on his left shoulder.

     Jonas stiffened slightly as he looked down at the dark hair spilling down his left side, then relaxed – it seemed the others trusted her, and he couldn’t explain why, but he felt inexplicably drawn to the playful woman who had also come to Earth from a far-distant planet, although under much different circumstances.

     He rested his head on top of hers and closed his eyes, squeezing her hand gently. For tonight, he was just going to get to know this beautiful woman and forget about the fate of their galaxy hanging in the balance.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Rare Pair Fest 2012, for mamageek.


End file.
